BREAKING: Mississippi Tea Party Leader Found DEAD

Reuters is reporting that a prominent leader of the Mississippi Tea Party who had been arrested in connection with photos posted online of U.S. Senator Thad Cochran’s wife was found dead on Friday of an apparent suicide.

58-year-old Mark Mayfield was the vide-chairman of the Mississippi Tea Party and a chairman of the Central Mississippi Tea Party, according to Reuters.

Mayfield was one of three men arrested last month of conspiring with an online blogger who was charged with taking photos of Cochran’s wife, who is bedridden in a nursing home, then using them in a political video against the incumbent Senator.

“This is a terrible tragedy that shouldn’t have happened,” Mayfield’s lawyer John Reeves told Reuters.

The fight for the Republican nomination was bitter leading up to the primaries, however Cochran ended up winning the nod by a narrow margin in a primary runoff on Tuesday.

According to Reeves, the criminal case against Mayfield was still in its early stages.